Black Widow (2021)

SPOILERS BELOW

The Ohio opening was fantastic, thrilling and emotionally affecting. Then the movie basically spends the rest of its time getting stuff in place for the climax. The action isn't awful, but the use of Flubbering CG doubles and choppy editing make it feel cartoonish and unsatisfying. The comedy banter falls flat consistently. The villain is crap (wish they'd got Julie Delpy back).

Taskmaster was kind of cool, I guess, and it was a clever Bourne-y idea to have this interquel (or whatever) based around Natasha dealing with her red ledger, so even though we know what's going to happen to her after the events of this story it doesn't cause that common prequel issue of no dramatic tension. Also, that post-credits scene got me more excited for Hawkeye (which I'm already looking forward to because it seems like they're going to take a lot of influence from the Matt Fraction run, which I loved), so well done there.

Rating: Meh.

Guns Akimbo (2019)

Utterly charmless, wholly derivative, and smugly self-satisfied at how distanced and post-modern it's being as if Fight Club, The Running Man and Death Race 2000 to name but a few didn't do all this decades ago. It's not even effective on the genre level, with no one acting remotely like human beings, super-fighters suddenly losing the ability to aim straight and the wimpy dweeb thrown into a world of violence able to survive back-alley surgery, gunshots and car crashes without missing a step. It also attempts to offer a treatise on humanity's relationship with violence, but can't even decide whether it's really bad or really cool.

Rating: Awful.

(Addendum: having now read about the director harassing a couple of critics, both women of colour, by falsely accusing them of bullying, it makes a lot of sense that this movie feigns condemnation of the fetishisation of violence while simultaneously enacting it.)

C.H.U.D. (1984)

Surprisingly good creature and gore effects, and solid acting (not so surprising considering the amazing list of big names in the cast, even if most of them are pre-fame and only get a 2 minute scene). But this is incredibly slow and sloppy, and clearly only had the budget for one take per shot.

Rating: Bad.